An incredibly busy Spring Semester is over, so Heather and I decided to treat ourselves to a real vacation. So after the rush of final exams, papers, big projects at working, and scrambling to grade my students' final exams (essays, yuck), we headed to Kauai, Hawaii at 6:00 am Thursday morning.
We flew Frontier from Denver to Pheonix, and then changed airlines to America West for a direct flight to Lihue, Kauai. This turns out to be a bit of a mistake - we had to exit Terminal Three, cross the street, get on a bus, and go to the gate in Terminal Four. This meant going through security again, which proves to be an adventure. Here's why:
In Denver, we discovered that Heather's new hip (supposedly, all ceramic) sets of the magnetometers at airport security checkpoints. At DIA, the TSA staff were helpful and curteous. This was not the case at Sky Harbor in Phoenix. For those of you not familiar with the setup at Sky Harbor, the arrangement and staff make you feel like a convict going to prison for the first time. The female screener that wanded Heather took a suspicious and accusatory attitude - especially about Heather's new hip.
Then we found out that all of the decent places to eat we outside the secure area. We made do with some pretty pathetic sourdough club sandwiches. Then we sat for two more hours to get on the America West flight for the 6 and half hour flight to Kauai.
America West was neither as bad as I've heard, nor as good as it should be. The staff were pleasant enough, but you have to pay for all the food - and they ran out of sandwiches before they got even part of the way through coach. We were ing the sixth row of coach, but they ran out before they got to us, so we made do with a poor excuse for a "snack box".
The Kauai airport is very small. There are four baggage carousels. It took half an hour for our luggage to come out, because they apparently unload by hand. At least we got our luggage, though, which we were concerned about with the change in airlines.
We picked up the car and followed the Dollar rental maps to the Hyatt. This island is amazingly beautiful. I lived on Oahu for three years (as a teenager at that age when nothing impresses you, so I didn't really appreciate it at the time), and it is nothing compared to Kauai. Kauai is paradise.
We go to the resort (all 52 acres of it) and checked in. Our room, while very nice, did not have the expected view. It faced the ocean, but all you could see was a manicured lawn, and some Mangroves...
At the top of the hill, you could see the Pacific Ocean...
So we arranged to change rooms, which we did around lunch time today. We are now on the fifth floor, not the first, and we have a gorgeous view of the Pacific and the resorts' lagoons and gardens.
More to follow from Paradise...
Posted by Chris at May 12, 2006 05:30 PM